Republica Press

Your Business & Political News Source

REPUBLICA PRESS
Your Business & Political News Source

Lebanon’s Financial Collapse Hits Where It Hurts: The Grocery Store

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BEIRUT, Lebanon — In normal times, Ziad Hassan, a grocery store manager in Beirut, would get a daily email from his chain’s management telling him which prices needed to be adjusted and by how much.

But as Lebanon’s currency has collapsed, sending the economy into a tailspin, the emails have come as often as three times a day, ordering price increases across the store.

“We have to change everything,” an exasperated Mr. Hassan said, adding that his employees often weren’t even able to finish marking one price increase before the next one arrived. “It’s crazy.”

The country’s economic distress grew more acute last week as the Lebanese pound sank to 15,000 to the dollar on the black market — its lowest level ever — sucking value from people’s salaries as prices for once affordable goods soared out of reach. It has since rebounded to about 12,000.

A catastrophic explosion in Beirut’s port in August, which killed 190 people and left a large swath of the capital in ruins, only deepened the misery.

In a country where most products are imported, the currency collapse has left no sector unaffected.

the United Nations said that more than 55 percent of Lebanon’s population had become poor, nearly double the number from the year before. Extreme poverty had increased threefold to 23 percent. And the situation has worsened since.

said in November that food prices in Lebanon had increased 423 percent since October 2019, the largest jump since monitoring began in 2007. Prices have continued to rise since, putting acute pressure on the poor.

designated in October to form a new government. But he has made little progress, despite 17 meetings to discuss political horse trading with President Michel Aoun. LastThursday, they agreed to meet again on Monday.

Jihad Sabat, 48, has watched the decline from the window of the Beirut butcher shop he has run since 1997. Over the last year, he said, the price of meat has kept rising while the number of customers has dwindled.

A pound of beef now costs more than three times what it would have before the crisis, he said — more than three times what it cost before the crisis. He has also seen a rise in people wanting to buy on credit and interested in taking bones to boil for soup.

“Meat has become a luxury,” he said.

He accused the country’s politicians of stealing the state’s money through corrupt schemes and criticized them for failing to stabilize the economy.

A friend hanging out in the shop interjected, “The problem is the people.” Mr. Sabat nodded.

“That’s an essential point,” he said. “If there were elections tomorrow, the same people would be back.”

In the grocery store, Mr. Hassan, the manager, said his branch sold less meat every month and more lentils, even though they, too, are imported and cost five times more than before the crisis.

Fights have broken out in the aisles over staples like rice, sugar and cooking oil subsidized by the government, he said. And it is common for customers to get sticker shock in the checkout lane when they realize they can afford only a few essentials.

“I don’t know how people keep going,” he said. “But it will eventually cause an explosion.”

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